Seahorse (4 page)

I see that now.

If he spent more time with Adheer, it was because Adheer sought him out more persistently, and successfully, than all the others. Hurrying after him in the corridors, waiting, nonchalantly, by the gates, reading on the lawns. Accompanying him to university talks and seminars. And while Nicholas escaped unscathed, for it didn't strike anyone to mock him, people called Adheer a “bender” behind his back. Others employed their words more delicately: “Look at him,” they whispered, “that poo pusher.”

In college everything was sexualized.

And looking back now, I realize, that was one thread that stitched us into some kind of collective. The mystery of sex, and (mostly) its lack.

Living in residence halls fueled by male camaraderie, regarding the close co-existence of girls, their mighty distance. In there, we were
swamped by complex hierarchies and communal fissures, trapped in an intricate system of jurisdiction—where the Jats were feared, the Punjus scorned, the northeasterners ignored, the Gujjus mocked, the Tam Brams held in mild amusement, the Bongs quietly tolerated, the Mallus generally liked by all and sundry. Then came the broader divisions of sports quota folk and special reservations, the slackers and endless Civil Service sloggers, the cool and uncool, the artsies and sciencees.

All entwined in the general joyful wastefulness of youth. And something else.

We'd move from room to room, swapping cigarettes, alcohol and lies. Talking, skirting the issue, the act of, plucking euphemisms from insecurity—do it, bang, beat, bone, bugger, screw, bonk, go all the way, home run, old in-out, pound, bed, shag, slay, mount, boff, bugger, cut, dance, dip, doink, scuff, fire, fubb, fuck, fug, do the nasty, get any, get it on, get lucky, give it up, hit it raw, hit skins, have a go, grease, hose, knock, make the beast with two backs, woopie, nail, ram, rock and roll, score, shine it, slap and tickle, smack, smash, lay, hump, plow, quickie, romp, ride, roger,
you know what.

It was endless, and language the sheet with which we all hid our nakedness, and longing.

On most weekends, the residence halls emptied, as students headed out to South Delhi or Connaught Place—the ones who could afford to drink at newly opened bars or watch movies at shiny multiplex cinemas. I'd been to South Delhi a few times, traveling there on a long bus ride from the Inter State Bus Terminal at Kashmiri Gate, filled with vehicles spewing smoke, roaring like metallic monsters. Past the green expanse of Raj Ghat alongside Mahatma Gandhi Road, the perpetually chaotic ITO, and the gated distance of Pragati Maidan. Slowing down
once the bus cut into the city, passing through Lajpat Nagar with its labyrinthine market, the calmer environs of Siri Fort, Delhi's second city, bourgeoisly concealing its brutal origins—founded by Ala-ud-din Khilji on the severed heads of eight thousand Mongol soldiers. From there, it wasn't far to our destination, to Saket Complex, lined with air-conditioned shops, a colorful new McDonalds and TGIF, and, its crowning glory, a royal blue-gold PVR cinema.

Others made their way to neighborhoods clustered around the college campus, to flats and apartments rented by their outstation friends, for parties fueled by cheap booze and marijuana. There were some, who stayed in, from not having been invited, or propeled by the fear of an unfinished assignment.

A Sunday night spent mustering inspiration to discuss
Waiting For Godot
as an existentialist text.
The essence of existentialism focuses on the concept of the individual's freedom of choice, as opposed to the belief that humans are controlled by a pre-existing omnipotent being, such as God. Estragon and Vladimir have made the choice of waiting, without instruction or guidance…

After a few insipid attempts, I'd usually sneak down to the common room in the residence hall. In the dark, the television screen burned tense and bright. Muted souls sat on the ground; one close enough to change channels expertly with an outstretched leg. The set had recently been hooked to Star TV and moved effortlessly from one channel to the next. Music followed by sport followed by the news, by movies and back again, in a dizzying circle. A ring of sacred, ancient rocks, surrounded by solstice worshippers. Often, I'd sit at the back while the others argued over what to watch—highlights of a tennis match between Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi, last year's Bollywood blockbuster
Hum Aapke Hain Kaun,
or endless MTV, where Nirvana and Pearl Jam displayed incredible angst and apathy.

Invariably, the dissent ceased at eleven. When the adult films aired.

Movies for which no one cared about the plot. A psychiatrist who fell in love with his troubled patient. A professor with his student. A young boy with his older neighbor.

Hisses and whistles broke out each time the girl's dress dropped, or the lead ran his hand up her thigh. The images unfolded in a montage of flesh and desire. Nobody bothered to follow dialogue, waiting mostly for the scenes in the pool, the shower. In a room that looked like a picture from a magazine, filled with plush leather sofas and pristine glass tables (did people really live like that?), where they (always a man and woman) fell in a heap on a spongy grey carpet. And then moved seamlessly to a wooden bed with rumpled blue sheets. Her bare breasts shiny and heaving under his hand. With a twist he'd grind into her from the back, while she clung loosely to the head board. Another time, in a Jacuzzi, lathered and wet, the water soapy in strategic places. She'd climb on top and arch against him. Scene change. And they'd be in a room filled with light streaming in from tall windows. On a table, he'd cradle her back and lean in towards her. Then the image splintered—caught in a kaleidoscopic reflection of bodies writhing in pleasure. When the credits rolled, few would leave. We waited, breathless, to watch the next offering.

In college, everything was sexualized, yet it was impossible to talk about sex.

On rare occasion, though, they took place, those conversations that cut cleanly through the euphemisms. When I returned to Delhi in mid-July for my second year at university, I found I'd been shifted into a room with someone new. A spindly long-limbed Tibetan. Kalsang, I was relieved to find, was minimally intrusive. He didn't talk all that much, he didn't pry, or ask me questions about my life in my hometown, or why I wrote letters to Lenny. We shared joints and lives of mutual exclusivity.

Yet sometimes, late at night, when it was marginally cooler, we'd keep the window open, our room filling with the fragrance of something
sweet, a distant flowering saptaparni. The pathways outside cobbled and vacant, bathed in yellow lamplight. We had conversations that, at that hour, people usually only held with themselves. Entirely plausible, of course, that this was intimacy occasioned by weed or alcohol, but I like to think it a special exclusion.

“I lost my virginity to my cousin,” Kalsang once told me. “I was fourteen, she was seventeen. We were visiting them in Kathmandu… I was sleeping on a mattress in the sitting room and she came downstairs… I was so scared someone would walk in. You know, my parents were sleeping in the next room… if they'd caught me…”

“What would've happened?”

“I don't know… they would've killed me.”

“Do you still see her?”

A long, errant silence. “Sometimes.”

On another night, even though I was terrified, I admitted, “I've never, you know…”

“What?”

“You know…”

I could see him, in the darkness, his outline upright on the bed.

“Never done anything?” he asked.

It didn't count, I suppose, the boy from my class in school, who I'd “accidentally” meet in the toilets or a corner of the empty library. The one in Math tuition, who sat beside me, his hand below the table, on my thigh, unconcerned by the mysteries of trigonometry. In my hometown, I'd hang out with Lenny, and he hardly talked about girls, or to girls. So I didn't tell him about my sister's friend, how she'd lean over while I was at my study table…
“Such a good boy, always reading”…
her neckline dropping low and open. How she'd casually brush against my arm, my shoulder, if we happened to cross paths in the kitchen, the corridor.

In college, I stayed away. Uneasy. Apprehensive. Unsure. There were too many invisible, unspoken rules to navigate. I thought of Adheer.
Poo pusher.
What would Kalsang do? If I told him. Would he shift out of our room too?

“So… nothing?” he reiterated.

“No.”

The silence lay rich and deep.

His voice broke through the darkness. “That's okay, man. They say the longer you wait, the better it feels.”

This wasn't, couldn't be, true, not in this world or the next, but that's the reason I was fond of Kalsang. He was exceptionally cheerful.

He began inviting me to parties outside college, probably in a bid to alter my chaste circumstances. But in vain. These were mostly large gatherings—immense crowds of strangers, friends of friends of friends—and I shied away. I could see, though, that it was a liberation. Outstation students who lived in the city harnessing a new, unbridled freedom. It couldn't have always been this way, but the country was changing. Opening its arms—multiple, like pictures of all those Hindu goddesses hanging in auto rickshaws and shops—to the world, embracing the policies of tomorrow. The ones that had brought Coca Cola and Hallmark into our markets, MTV into our homes, and stamped Levi's across our asses. Allegedly, this was “freedom of choice”. And it filtered to us, in our student room, with its wobbly wooden tables and bare lamps, rumpled sheets and uncushioned chairs, all coated in a layer of undisputed dust. We could head elsewhere, if we preferred, somewhere brighter, more glittery. Where everyone dressed like the people on TV, and danced to the latest music, and believed that somehow, because of all this, they were unbelievably lucky.

“Want to come?” Kalsang would ask.

“Alright, let's go.”

The night awaited, brimming with possibility.

I never did find out whether anything happened between Nicholas and Adheer.

Despite the rumors.

In all our time together, I hesitated to ask.

(In all our time together, I hardly needed to think of Adheer.)

They made me think of Adheer.

I suppose it's an alliance that calls for some explanation.

One morning, in late September, I headed out the college campus into the Ridge Forest. Trying, fervently, to avoid thinking of a news item from a few weeks ago—a corpse had been found, hastily hidden in the undergrowth. For days, newspapers plied their choicest headlines: “Mystery Body”; “Mutilated beyond recognition”; “Advanced stages of putrefaction.”

Apparently, this happened here with disconcerting frequency.

And if it wasn't the discovery of a corpse, the Ridge, as with most ancient places, seethed with other stories. Of unhappy spirits that lived in its trees. Of a strange creature, similar to a white horse with a very long neck, which could often be sighted at night. Of a ghostly woman and child weeping. It was well known too that amorous couples found shelter here behind the cover of shadow and leaves.